Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Four 1715 Fleet Spanish Reales Found During One Beach Hunt. |
A day or two ago I was looking for a particular reale when I noticed a little plastic bag containing four different reales (shown above). They were found on the same beach as the one I showed more recently. But when I saw these four reales in the bag, I saw one larger one and three smaller coins. The small ones attracted my attention because of how small they, but more importantly, how much detail I could see. They were clean, very much like the more recent find.
I was glad I had them labeled with the date of the finds. All four were found on the same day while metal detecting in the month of November.
I've said many times in the past that the November through February are peak months for finding 1715 Fleet cobs on the beaches. And in recent years, November has proved to be one of the better months, with especially good finds being made in November of 2020 and 2022.
Another thing I've often said is that birds of a feather flock together. I say that to suggest that when you find one of a kind, it is more likely that there are more. That is illustrated with the four coins in the bag from one November hunt. One larger coins was found along with three others of very similar size.
When you find one treasure coin like that, it is a good idea to keep hunting, because the likelihood of there being more is good. I once did a survey that supported that. Sorry, but I couldn't find the post with the specific survey result, but I'm sure of the conclusion.
Another example was the day I found some gold nuggets. After finding, the first I found two more. That is a rare find, yet when one was found, more were found. That is an important point. I could go on forever with examples illustrating the same thing.
But I decided to inspect the small cobs from this group more closely. Two of those had very nice monograms - both Phillip - and all four cobs appeared to be from the the Mexico mint, but I wondered what more I could determine from a closer look at the showing nice monograms.
Below are the two cobs I'm taking another look at. Can you tell how old they are or which is the oldest of the two.?
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| Two Mexico Minted Half Reales Showing Phillip Monograms. |
The half reale on the left does not show the date but does show the mint mark. To the left of the "P" you can see the M and P. It would read OMP, but the O is not clear. So what can we tell from that?
The P mint mark appears on coins dated 1634 - 1665. So that would be the date range for this coin. It is earlier than some 1715 Fleet cobs.
Below is a stylized illustration of the monogram that would appear on a cob of that time period and below that is an example of a half reale from the period of assayer P. The monogram illustration doesn't show the OMP mark.
The assayer is J, but the assistant assayer's initial during this period (O) appears to the right of the S. I believe that is the what I am seeing on the second cob. That puts the secondcob in the date range of 1700 - 1715, which is earlier than the other one.
Match the one below with the 1705 illustration above.
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| Surf Chart from SurfGuru.com. |
The tides are big now. Check out the full moon.
Looks like we could have a bigger surf in a week or so.
Good hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net